Chanel Métiers d’Art New York: what happened at The Met and why it matters
On 4 December 2018, Chanel staged its Métiers d’Art show inside the Temple of Dendur at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The setting was not a backdrop, it was the message: craft meets culture, luxury meets a city that never sleeps.
The collection paid tribute to Egypt through a New York lens, with gilded tweeds, scarab motifs and sharp, urban tailoring under the museum’s monumental sandstone. The Met notes the Temple of Dendur dates to around 10 B.C., and that ancient glow powered Chanel’s codes into the now.
Inside the Paris – New York collection: craft turned into city light
The Métiers d’Art line was created in 2002 to spotlight the specialist maisons Chanel works with year-round. Embroidery by Lesage, feathers from Lemarié, jewelry by Goossens, hats by Maison Michel, shoes by Massaro: the show exists to put these hands front row.
New York got the full force of that savoir-faire. Thick black eyeliner framed faces like living reliefs. Tweed came lacquered with gold. Beaded scarabs and hieroglyph-like trims ran along hems and lapels. A few looks tilted modern – a neat bomber, shimmering knits, metallic headpieces that caught the spotlights like city windows.
Celebrities filled the stone gallery, but the runway’s energy stayed on the work: the tiny sequins stitched by the thousands, the feather puffs set one by one, the hammered metal cuffs that felt dug from a downtown antiquities shop. It looked opulent. It moved like real clothes.
Why New York, why then: artisanship meets the biggest luxury stage
There was strategy under the spectacle. According to Bain et Company’s 2023 Luxury Goods Worldwide Market Study, the United States represented about 31% of global personal luxury goods spending in recent years, making it the largest market. Planting Métiers d’Art in Manhattan was more than a postcard.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art offered context that no set build could match. The institution documents the Temple of Dendur’s Roman-period origin and its 1965 gift to the United States, a story of preservation and cultural exchange that echoed Chanel’s mission to safeguard rare skills.
That mission has a permanent home in Paris. Chanel inaugurated Le 19M in 2021, a 25,000-square-metre site that brings together more than 600 artisans from its partner maisons. The brand describes it as a living hub for training, transmission and production – the supply line behind the gliter.
What the show proved: a living archive, not nostalgia
The main idea came through clearly: Métiers d’Art is not a museum of techniques, it is a laboratory. New York amplified that message by placing modern silhouettes within millennia-old stone, the kind of contrast that makes a tweed miniskirt read new again.
There is a common pitfall with themed shows: costume. Chanel avoided it by cutting clean lines and letting the artisans carry the storytelling. A gold knit paired with white denim felt resolutely city. A slim black coat traced with beadwork read like a night skyline, not a masquerade.
Why craft still drives the conversation comes down to continuity. Métiers d’Art began in 2002 to give these maisons steady work between seasons, and to secure skills that machines cannot replicate. Le 19M scaled that vision, but New York translated it for a global audience in one image-rich night.
The missing link for many readers is where to see the work up close. Chanel regularly opens exhibitions dedicated to Le 19M’s artisans in major cities and at partner museums, while The Met holds extensive galleries on Egyptian art that frame the Temple of Dendur’s story. That combination – public culture and private craft – is exactly what made Chanel’s Métiers d’Art New York resonate.